


Heaven's Row

by lavendre



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Corpse Desecration, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25030285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavendre/pseuds/lavendre
Summary: Cold comforts after Banora. Tseng's got them. Zack tries not to think too hard about it.
Relationships: Zack Fair/Tseng
Comments: 7
Kudos: 10





	Heaven's Row

Tseng talks with the pilot then returns with a headset for him.  
  
The copter’s noise becomes a dull hum after the roar of the fire, but the bombs dropping overhead like lead weights still ring in his ears with their destruction. Zack’s seen things at this point in his military career, but the charred houses are a failure screaming back at him. Angeal’s mother will have the whole town over head, he thinks, punishing himself with the thought; it's the kind of burial reserved for people in war time on the losing side. He’s pretty sure that’s how ghosts are made.   
  
Zack watches the flames until they fall out of sight -- not long, as the speed of the copter isn’t doing the strain on his neck any favors. When his eyes start to hurt he rubs his thumbs into the creases and sees something else.  
  
Tseng’s got dirt all the way up to his elbow, smeared gray along his bicep. His hair is down and eyes closed.  
  
He’d had to dig deep.  
  
“Were you close?” Zack asks.  
  
Tseng looked dully at him, processing, mouth hardly moving at all. “Yes. I sent them here.”  
  
“Angeal’s mother said they were occupied over a month ago. When did you lose contact?”  
  
“Two weeks ago,” Tseng says.  
  
"Ah." Zack imagines what a two week old corpse looks like. Bloated, pale white, starting to swell up like a balloon while the insects move in. He can feel himself getting green at the edges.  
  
“Don’t think about it,” Tseng says. “It’s for me to worry about.”  
  
“Sephiroth was right to refuse,” Zack blurts. “I couldn’t reach Angeal at all. He wouldn’t even look at me.”  
  
“He’s guilty. You’re his student. Doubtless, he doesn’t want you involved.”  
  
“Tough shit,” Zack says. He scrubs his face, irritable. His whole body’s humming from the blades overhead, like it does when the Sector 5 train rumbles into the aging station in fits and starts -- small rocks from his shoes slide along the metal floor and he watches them until his head goes sideways, the headset pinching a silver stud into the side of his head. Ow. He's sure he's making a scene.  
  
He wanted to believe he was on his way to solving the puzzle but now he feels like he knows less than before. He'd had a vision of riding in the pull down seat the whole way home. And there's no returning here later. Banora's as barren as the moon. It looks exactly as he's starting to feel -- gray and blistered at the edges.  
  
"Zack."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Don't go thinking this is all your responsibility."  
  
He started. "...'M not. Just wishing people would be straight with me."  
  
Helpfully, Tseng leans against the constraints of the seat-belt to drop a clipboard in his lap. It's a bit of a stretch for his arm. “There’s a crossword in the back,” he says. "Should be a neat fit for you. There's lines and definitions and everything."  
  
Zack looks at him, then at the board. Starts flipping through to the back pages, mind whirling, brain threatening to explode out his ears and his mouth and every synapse in his body wanting to fly to pieces. Not so great when there’s a whole lot of space between him and the ground. No need to wreck a chopper for the sake of a little upset.  
  
...There _is_ a crossword in the back. He stares at it. He wants to laugh but he doesn't. The only thing in the world that makes sense is suddenly in his hands. “...An eight letter word for something bright that emits brilliance.”  
  
“Splendor. Radiance. Grandeur.”  
  
Zack scribbles them off to the side, checks the next box down.  
  
“A three letter word for a total.”  
  
“Sum. You know that one.”  
  
“Yeah,” he says blandly. “I was just testing you. You passed. Congrats! A thirteen letter word for an intersection of sorts.”  
  
“...Perpendicular.”  
  
He hums. Exactly how he’s feeling. Like he just hit the crossroad from hell and was shot point-blank by the cross hairs, the little proverbial dot on the map where a town full of secrets/answers/awful realities used to be -- there’s still a faint heat lingering in the cab, slightly acidic, like maybe something more than a shiny veneer was stripped clean when the bombs went off. Tseng’s forehead looks damp, but his eyes are sharp and full in his face. Zack feels too aware of it all. The pen is sticky in his hand.  
  
“There’ll be time to mourn later,” Tseng says, the pause stretching. Placating words. For a little boy. He could be laughing. Maybe he is.  
  
 _You do this a lot?_ Zack wants to ask. _Distract people from imminent disaster with word puzzles while you close your eyes against the burning?_ He doesn’t. He doesn’t think about Angeal either. Or mass graves in Wutai. Or how similar they were below.  
  
“I have letters for Sephiroth,” he says instead. Taps the blue pen against his lower lip, which had been in Tseng’s hands previous, the hands that were handling dead bodies not an hour ago. Now moving on to other things. Guns. Reports. Reconnaissance. Next priority. _Me_.  
  
“Is there a column for that?”  
  
Zack scratches his chin, readjusts the headset over his ears. They have several hours to pass until Midgar. _Focus_. “Not yet,” he sighs, looking for a six letter word. “But there will be.”

**Author's Note:**

> I enjoy Zack's partnership with Tseng a lot. There's a lot of things between them I want to unpack in more works, though it's hard to bridge Tseng's personality as presented in the OG with his persona in Crisis Core. I'll keep trying.
> 
> I'm using both meanings of "row" in the title, as in n. a fight, and n. x-axis related row. For those who like to sleuth.


End file.
